A Living Model of Vincent Van Gogh's Severed Ear Is Touring Galleries Around the World

After all these years, it's still unclear exactly why Vincent van Gogh had a severed ear. Some say he had a nervous breakdown, while others think Paul Gauguin chopped it off during a fight and the two kept it a secret to the grave. More than 100 years later, the ear still lives on, both in myth and in actual reality.

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Artist Diemut Strebe created a living replica of van Gogh's missing ear for a piece called Sugababe, and it's been touring museums and galleries around the world. The work debuted in Germany's Centre for Art and Media, and currently, it's on display at the Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York City, according to Artnet News. The title is a reference to the girl group Sugababes, which completely replaced its original members one by one, like the Ship of Theseus thought experiment.

The Daily Beast reports that Strebe collected DNA from Lieuwe van Gogh, a grandson of the artist's brother Theo, to create the work. Then she used a computer model to recreate the shape of van Gogh's ear. The result floats in a nutrient-rich solution to keep the polymer alive. People can "speak" to it through a microphone, and a computer processor creates nerve pulses that apparently allow the ear to "hear." The first person to speak to the ear was linguist and author Noam Chomsky.